Students at La Salle Institute learned firsthand on Wednesday what it takes to be part of the Capital Region's growing class of successful entrepreneurs.

Juniors and seniors who are taking marketing and entrepreneurship classes heard from three experienced and proven business figures in the area — Joe Richardson, Dick Frederick and Chet Opalka — about their involvement in a local investment group that puts money into start-up companies.

The group, Eastern New York Angels, or ENYA, is a "managed" seed fund that provides early stage capital to mostly technology companies.

A group of so-called "angel" investors puts money into the fund, which then searches for promising local start-ups. Typical initial investments are usually $100,000.

The three said the world of venture capital is often unspectacular and plodding, and that trying to get most start-ups off the ground is painful.

Less than 1 percent of the companies that have submitted business plans to ENYA have received money from the group.

And only 2 percent even go through the exhaustive due-diligence process that ENYA conducts when it believes a company is worth looking at.

To date, ENYA has funded just six local operations from the 750 business plans it has received. The six include Hocus Locus, a University at Albany start-up focused on stem cell discoveries, and Ener-G-Rotors, a Rotterdam company involved in converting industrial waste heat into electricity.

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"Just because we want to do due diligence doesn't mean we want to invest," said Richardson, a longtime banker who is a managing partner in ENYA, as is Frederick. Opalka, one of the founders of Albany Molecular Research, is one of about 30 ENYA investors.

The three told the La Salle students that the most important quality is a belief in an invention or business idea. Otherwise, it won't sell, and no one will fund it.

"You need to have a tremendous amount of passion," Frederick said. "You have to have tremendous faith that what you have is a valid product and that you're going to commit yourself to it."